


Five Count

by Ylevihs



Series: How Not to Fall [28]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Retribution Spoilers, Therapy, canon typical self esteem issues, light fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 02:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20556782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ylevihs/pseuds/Ylevihs
Summary: Richard struggles to do his homework





	Five Count

Deep breaths.

Focus on one in. Ten seconds. One out, ten seconds through the exhale. 

Ignore the way that one rib still wanted to catch and pull and. In, in, in, hold, out, out, out. 

A thought at the front of his brain drove a sharp elbow into his side. Speaking. Words that he should probably be paying attention to. 

“…that’s alright?” Across the low table, Dr. Finch adjusted her notebook on her knees and looked at him expectantly. Richard found, sharply and without any reason to accompany it, that he wanted nothing to do with her thoughts. The room around them came into sharper focus; a defense mechanism. If he focused on everything else there would be no way to focus on her. 

Somewhere in a colder corner of his thoughts, shaking hands began slamming shutters in icy windows.

There were ringed stains on the table—glasses of water on the patient side. Slightly darker circles from the Doctor’s coffee. Faint. Only really visible if you were looking for them. A box of tissues on the small side table, half empty. Off brand. Huh. Office spaces always had the same sort of back of the throat toner and warm paper and bad carpet smells. A therapist’s office was apparently no different. An attempt had been made to make the space more relaxing, diffuser sticks sat in the far corner by her desk. Probably lavender. Too far away to. “Richard?”

“Sorry. I uh,” something stuck in his throat, and for the first time in a long time it felt more physical than not. Maybe scheduling physical therapy and Dr. Finch in the same day had been a bad move. “There’s a lot. I was just a million miles away,” trying to be anywhere but here. 

Dr. Finch regarded that statement carefully, watching to see if the other shoe was going to drop. When it didn’t, she nodded gently. “Any sort of accident, however minor, can be very stressful. I know you said earlier that you weren’t interested in talking about it, but,”

“I’m not,” maybe a little more forceful than necessary. He didn’t want to talk about the fake car accident, that was true, he just hadn’t anticipated that Dr. Finch would be so willing to try and tackle the bigger issue. Had hoped distantly that she’d ease into it. Softer than she.

His mind helpfully supplied the rest of the sentence he’d blocked out. I’d like to take some time, she’d said, to discuss your feelings of self-worth. If that’s alright? 

“You’re sure?” it was a gentle pressure. An experimental fingertip to a fresh bruise. Without looking Richard could feel eyes on the real bruises. Deep yellow and purple and sick green. Eyes on his lips pressed tightly together like a disapproving teacher catching students passing notes. He hadn’t had time to make a dental appointment yet; the snapped incisor showed whenever he spoke. Last time Dr. Finch checked, 2014 Toyota corolla’s didn’t use fists.

“Yeah, I’ll be alright,” couldn’t even sound like he had convinced himself. “Not much to talk about anyway,” Richard felt the creeping urge to bounce his knee and resisted only because the nauseating ache from his hip was too strong to let it. Fingers twisted between his knees as if to compensate. Knuckles cracked. “It was my own fault, so it’s not like I can even be upset about,” ah, beans, he shouldn’t have said that. Finch had straightened up, so slow and cautious that it was practically a beacon in the dark for what was coming. And was scribbling in a very deliberate not-rapid-at-all, what are you talking about, way. 

“Richard,” ah, beans. “When you say it was your own fault,” ah, beans. He could reach in. Devious little thought, that. Reach in and ah, no, he’d never said that. In fact, look at the time, their session was almost. “What did you mean?” he wasn’t going to do that. It was seductive but sat uneasily on his skin like thick motor oil. Wouldn’t sink in no matter how long he left it to sit. 

“I uh. You know, was jay walking,” he waved what he hoped was a dismissive hand. It was hard not to project. Not to leak out whatever emotion would be most convenient to get Finch’s attention off of him. But that was the point, wasn’t it? She couldn’t help if he didn’t let her in. The truth of that didn’t make it any easier to realize that she was wiping her feet on the door mat and going to be making comments about his wallpaper. “Being stupid. I darted into the street, so I deserved to get hit,” _really_ shouldn’t have said that. He could feel her attention softening. A conscious dulling of her focus. 

“Do you think that because you committed a minor offense, the jay walking, that you deserved physical injury as a punishment?” she spoke in a measured tone. Metered syllables. She wasn’t about to call out his lie about the accident but it was clear in the way that she spoke about it. Her tone of voice. Her. 

“No,” Richard felt the lie in his broken tooth. “No, I mean. It was my. Getting hit was nobody’s fault but my own. If I had been more. If I’d been careful from the start, I wouldn’t have gotten hurt,” and then Richard had to try not to vomit because Dr. Finch’s thoughts grew a fraction louder, loud enough to be heard, and she was connecting a dot or two and oh, they’d never really discussed it, but he did have a partner? Oh, and ‘deserving being hit’ because ‘he wasn’t being careful’ and. “No. No, look. There’s a police report any everything,” a harsher lie, but one that Richard packed into a mental grappling hook and shot straight between Finch’s temples. “I was at fault for crossing the street where I shouldn’t have,”

Dr. Finch made furrowed her brow ever so slightly as the lie settled in. Folded itself along the creases of her brain and was accepted. Her thoughts rounded back. 

“Do you think any person who does something wrong deserves to get hurt?”

“No,” and Richard could feel where she was headed but couldn’t bring himself to cut her off. 

“No? But you do believe that you did?”

“Some people _do_ deserve to get hurt,” he felt her next question coming and tightened his shoulders against it. It made the spaces between his vertebrae ache. “As a consequence. Like. If you rob a bank you run the risk of getting shot by the police, right? So if you do get shot, it’s your own fault for robbing the bank in the first place,”

“Robbing a bank and crossing the street are a little different from one another,” Dr. Finch pointed out, but gently. “So villains. ‘Bad guys’ deserve to get hurt?” it gathered in Richard’s esophagus, bulbous and sour.

“You know what? Yeah. Sure. They do,” 

Dr. Finch’s next look was long and steady and softer than heat rising from the pavement in the summer evenings. “Do you think of yourself as a villain, Richard? Do you think you’re a ‘bad guy’?” 

There was no way to answer that. At least, not in any way that could satisfy both of them. He certainly wasn’t the worst villain to ever hit Los Diablos, he didn’t think he could even make the top ten—especially once things like heartbreak or the nanosurge were counted. But his exploits were news. Politicians were aware that he was watching them and the city absolutely wanted his ass behind bars, if only to save their checkbooks. But he was still. If Steel or Argent or, hell, even the LDPD caught Mad Dog just right one day. If he slipped up a little too much? Getting arrested or killed was just a consequence of his own choices. He did deserve it, if it came to that. 

So. Alright. Villain? Sure. Bad Guy? Less of struggle, because of course he was. He was an escaped Frankenstein-esque science project, who had stolen a woman’s body for his own uses and then manipulated not one but two of his opposing number into caring about him. Had somehow managed to lie and cheat his way into ruining the life of one of them so severely that Daniel didn’t even. Wouldn’t even. 

Apparently the silence was lasting a bit too long for Dr. Finch’s liking. 

“I wanted to try an exercise today, but our time for this session is almost out. I do think, however,” she paused and then seemed to come to a decision, nodding to herself for emphasis. “I do think it’s something you can work on in your own time,” She flipped over a page and produced a sheet of paper with several parallel lines on it, each line numbered carefully down the left hand side. “If you can, I want you to go home and list your favorite parts about yourself,” 

Richard felt his mind go blank.

“What.”

“They don’t have to be all right at once, and you don’t need to force it. You can even go back and change things. But before our next session I’d like to see if you can think of five things you genuinely _like_ about yourself,” Five things. Exactly half of Richard scoffed and the other half stared at its own feet in complete and wretched defeat. Only five verses five whole, separate, unique things. Huh. __

_ _“Can I start with ‘I’m only slightly freakishly tall’?”_ _

_ _“You can also put ‘funny’, since you want to make jokes about it,”_ _

_ _“Right.” _ _

_ _\--_ _

_ _The page sat blank on the surface of the island in the kitchen and Richard had every intention of leaving it there until judgement day. The next session? Oh, he must have forgotten it, left in a rush and all. Spilled water all over the dang thing. Like an eight year old explaining that the family dog had eaten his homework. _ _

_ _Richard leaned back as much as was comfortable against the kitchen island and swallowed a groan. Five things. Should not be difficult. He couldn’t put that he was tall, because although it wasn’t a bad thing it did get him more attention than he wanted. Couldn’t put that he was psychic because, ah ha, Finch didn’t know about that. Yet. Writing down ‘I make sure people don’t die when I bomb buildings’ probably wasn’t going to go over very well. With Finch or the police, patient confidentiality be damned. She wasn’t paid that well. He didn’t think. _ _

_ _He uh. Cared? About other people? Sure. That was why he lied to Ricardo for a decade and had snapped Daniel’s kneecap in half and then fucked him without telling him who he really was. Yeah, no. Couldn’t put that down. He ‘wasn’t violent’ was also a rather large falsehood. He just wasn’t as violent as he could be. He was damned hard to kill. He hoped. Again, cockroach-like survival skills probably didn’t meet Dr. Finch’s sniff test. Good at keeping secrets? Ah, lying. An unselfish lover. Lying to Daniel those first few times notwithstanding, he might actually be able to swing that one. It still didn’t go on the list. _ _

_ _Dr. Finch didn’t need to know about his bedroom. _ _

_ _He looked non-threatening. That thought vacillated wildly in his own head between ‘I look like someone’s deadbeat uncle’ and ‘I don’t look like a guy who beats his boyfriend’. But. Again. How to word it on paper in a way that wouldn’t make Dr. Finch go ‘and why is looking gentle so important?’_ _

_ _He kept his apartment clean. Spotless. Unhinged paranoia could do that to a man. Hard to hide bugs when he knew every scuff and every stray carpet fiber and scrubbed the walls religiously. But. No. He could put that one down. _ _

_ _Organized. _ _

_ _Neat handwriting and everything. _ _

_ _Okay. He had one. _ _

_ _There were about twenty lines on the page in total. Despite Finch having only asked for five, Richard could feel the rest of those parallels glaring up at him. Empty spaces just waiting for him to walk back into Dr. Finch’s office and have to come up with fifteen more, on the spot. _ _

_ _Leave the future for the future. Right now he just needed four more. _ _

_ _He was. Was he smart? It didn’t really feel like he was. Not anymore at least. He wasn’t a slack jawed idiot. Great. He was good in a fight—again, not the sort of thing Dr. Finch probably expected to see on the paper and especially not after he’d shown up to the last appointment covered in bruises and missing half a tooth. _ _

_ _Richard didn’t turn around when the front door’s many locks began snicking open. He’d had to learn to stop using the chain lock as well, but his fingers still twitched for it every time he shut the door. It was one of Daniel’s many kindnesses that he used the front door. He could have very easily flown onto the balcony and come in through there. But that would require Richard to leave that door unlocked. And neither of them trusted him to do that, not quite yet. _ _

_ _“Hey,” Daniel’s voice was steady and familiar and slipped into his own head like snow melt. Richard felt his hands flipping the paper over without telling them to and turned slowly, trying not to wrench his hip any more than was necessary. Let himself lean back gently on the countertop._ _

_ _“Hey,” and he watched as Daniel hesitated by the door, redoing the locks. Fluttering thoughts grouping around each one to make sure it was secure. Including the chain. Jesus, he didn’t deserve him. _ _

_ _When the last click hit home, Daniel turned with a small smile and floated further into the apartment. There was something on his mind; his thoughts dipped and rose a little haphazardly. Richard didn’t pry. “How’d it go today?” _ _

_ _“Not terrible,” Richard allowed. Physical therapy turned out to be worlds easier when it involved someone who actually knew what they were doing and weren’t out to get a machine back up to snuff for inspections. He’d left the office sore and exhausted but in a manageable way. Was gonna be stiffer than one of Ricardo’s suit collars in the morning though. “I saw Argent there,” _ _

_ _“Oh yeah!” Daniel’s eyes lit up with a pleased grin. The swell of his thoughts matched the expression and the feeling of it hooked into the corners of Richard’s mouth and tried to pull upwards. “She goes there a lot! And always said they do really good work. I figured that you wouldn’t. Er. Couldn’t see one of the Rangers’ docs, so you could go where she does,” _ _

_ _“Thanks, Danny,” he offered back, meaning it. _ _

_ _“And how did the rest of it go? With Dr. Finch, I mean,” _ _

_ _“Fine,” Richard tried not to cut the word hard and seemed to succeed. Daniel rose an inch and drifted into the kitchen properly, thoughts still doing their subtle dodge and dart. Oh, something very much on his mind. “She didn’t buy the car accident story but she also didn’t press it,” _ _

_ _“Oh, good,” very much on his. Ah. “I. Found the note you left me,” no beating around the bush then. Dusty pink rose up on his cheekbones and Richard felt a flush raising to match it. “It was. I liked it,” and his thoughts were bustling around it now—the memory of it, at least. A small slip of paper hidden up just above Richard’s own height and right about at where Daniel may have caught a glimpse of it. It he’d been looking. Floating at the right space. “It was sweet,”_ _

_ _“It was just,” just a little note. Something small because he couldn’t seem to make himself do anything worthwhile anymore. The confessions were out of the way and the lies had been exposed and now all that was left was the rather small and frankly unexciting reality of him. “Thought it would be nice,”_ _

_ _“It was,” Daniel confirmed again and Richard couldn’t do anything to stop the small hiccups of warmth spreading up through his chest. When Richard finally managed to look up enough to make eye contact, Daniel had drifted close enough to lean in for a gentle kiss. Soft and warm and oh? Hands on his shoulders and then one on the back of his neck and. Danny’s forehead against his own. Without telling them to, Richard’s hands had found Daniel’s waist and were drawing him in. “I didn’t know you wrote poetry,” he pressed the words against the corner of Richard’s mouth. _ _

_ _“Don’t let Ortega find out. I have a reputation to protect,” the wink he threw out landed and earned him another quick peck. The wind currents hadn’t died down in his head though. Richard felt the thoughts slipping against his radar like leaves along a branch. _ _

_ _“Mhm, sure,” a subtle lift. Just enough to get a better look. _ _

_ _“Something else on your mind, lover boy?” _ _

_ _Daniel flushed again but didn’t pull away. “Yes,” he waited and Richard got the distinct impression that he was waiting to see if Richard could pick up on it in his head. He could have. He didn’t. “I. Uh. Wanted your opinion on something,” another pause. _ _

_ _Richard fidgeted slightly against the counter, relieving some of the weight on his hip but shifting his rib in a way that made him want to hiss. “Okay,” a different release of weight and Daniel’s hands left his neck and shoulder and found his own hands instead. It suddenly felt like they were too warm and going to start sweating at any second. A strange and unwelcome brush of tension. “Danny?”_ _

_ _“It’s. The lease on my apartment is ending soon. At the end of next month. And I,” he glanced around and Richard felt the way his thumb rubbed against the back of his hand and. “I wanted to know if you think I should renew it. Or if, um,” or if he should move in here. _ _

_ _Which would be a terrible idea. The press would have a field day if they managed to find out that Herald had moved in with the mysterious benefactor they’d all harped on a few months ago and then forgotten about. And the Rangers’ PR team would have to deal with. If it meant that. And that could—would—bring so much attention onto Richard. Onto where he lived. There would be eyes on him until the next big thing, but still. Eyes that found him once could find him again. And that would put Danny even higher on the radar of anyone else that had Richard in their sights. And sure, Daniel practically already did live with him. Most nights. Most mornings. Most. And. But. Wasn’t that just getting so close to. To. It may have been miles or it may have been baby steps, but it was still edging closer to. _ _

_ _To that temptation of permanency. Hard to plan for the permanent future when all you can count on is your own death. Was your own death. There was suddenly a great deal more time stretching out before him than Richard had ever let himself consider. _ _

_ _And the last thought that sidled in through the gathering throng and began whispering into onlooker’s ears was that Richard would like it. His thoughts were already warming to the idea of this being their home and as quickly as they warmed they sent ice water through his veins. _Their_ home. Toeing dangerously close to a line that Richard hadn’t even wanted to acknowledge existed. His mind began railing against every other part of himself that argued back that. That it would. It would be wrong, more than wrong it would be disturbed, to ask Daniel to make that sort of commitment to ruining his life like that and. And. Anxiety, subtle concern, not wanting to press, not wanting not to press. _ _

_ _“But. I mean, if it’s not something that,”_ _

_ _“I’d like that,” traitorous mouth, treasonous tongue. Daniel dipped for a moment as the realization sunk in and then beamed. He’d been expecting rejection, Richard realized with a sick sort of wonder. Daniel had been waiting for him to say no, but had been hoping for. _ _

_ _The wave hit Richard like a full body blast of warm air. “You would?” the feeling of it clogged up his throat and his sinuses and he managed a soft:_ _

_ _“Yeah, I. Yes,”_ _


End file.
